Why is this film labeled as a Zombie Film? It's Not!

Rating: 6/10 (15 December 2005)

I hated this film the 1st time I saw it, because I was expecting a British zombie film, similar to Resident Evil, which I had seen just a few weeks prior. However, 2 and a half yrs later I watched it again & have to say as far as a virus infecting the population film & turning them into rage-infested murderers, it was a very decently made film. I really like the director Danny Boyle, who directed one of my all-time favorite drug films, Trainspotting (a great novel,by the way) & the very good Shallow Grave as well. And then he has done stinkers like Alife Less ordinary, & The Beach. 28 Days Later kinda is better than the latter but not as good as the first two i just mentioned. Cillian Murphy is very good in this film as Jim. After waking up from a coma after being out of it for the past 28 days, he has no idea that the isle of the UK has been either evacuated or is dead or is infected by a virus called Rage, which was released by a group of Animals Rights activists, who upon feeling sympathy for the chimps who are being subjected to the virus, are let loose out of their cages, even while the scientist is screaming at them to not let it loose. And, upon the chimp being set free,he bites the female in the group, who proceeds to & after a visually distributing scene of her rising within seconds, hissing & her eyes having turned completely blood-shot begins puking blood all over her compatriot, whose then infected & then you see Jim awaken in a hospital. Unbelievable, as most coma victims can't walk for a few days after due to being bed-ridden for so long, but Jim gets right up & starts walking miles through the abandoned city of London ( which is visually stunning work,that Mr Boyle did awesomely, by filming really early in the morning,before the city woke up to go to work) & you feel for his character, the anxiety & fear he has, as he seems to be the only living person left in London. However,soon enough he runs into the infected & while chasing him he encounters a man & a woman, who save him & take him & explain what he's missed by being a sleep. Naomie Harris does a great job in the film as well. Christopher Eccelston shows once again that he's great at playing bad guys, as he plays the Military general who by leaving a radio message out to be broadcast to any survivors that he has the cure to the virus. Jim & company make their way to Manchester (on streets way too unbelievably without traffic) to find a Military group with only 2 things on their minds: Sex & Survival. And,Naomie 's character & the young 14 yr old girl are going to be the Breeders of a new generation, whether they want to or not. Some very intense moments, where you think the 2 girls are about to be roughly & grossly gang-raped & the scenes where Jim is being taken to be executed for not just allowing the Military guys to rape his friends & then him escaping into the wilderness, where many of the infected are still roaming, was scary. And,the infected black solider, who the live military guys have chained,like a dog in the backyard, when Jim sets him free to help him by attacking & infecting his still alive com padres was intense as he's scary looking.I loved it each time he basically, vomited blood all over the soldiers infecting them. Why, this is listed as a Zombie film, I'll never know as it has a virus being let loose on the public similarity like nIGHT oF tHE lIVING dEAD & Resident Evil, but in those films, they die first, then come back to life to eat the flesh of the living, hence infecting them. In this their living infected people who aren't interested in eating human flesh, just infecting new people. That doesn't make them Zombies,people.I also wonder, as they never mention it but was the UK countries of Scotland,Wales, or Ireland affected at all? And, i heard their in pre-production on doing a sequel 29dAYS Later. i wonder how their planning on doing it & will Alex gARLAND BE WRITING THE SCRIPT? Check this out if you like suspenseful horror where infected people want to kill each other. If you want a Zombie film go see any George Romeo Zombie film, or the remake of Dawn of tHe dEad from 2004. *** out of *****